DIRECTOR OF MISSOURI BOTANICAL GARDEN, PETER RAVEN, PRESENTED WITH UNITED NATIONS ENVIRONMENT PRIZE

Press Release
HE/929

DIRECTOR OF MISSOURI BOTANICAL GARDEN, PETER RAVEN, PRESENTED WITH UNITED NATIONS ENVIRONMENT PRIZE

ST. LOUIS, 28 February 1996 (UNEP) -- Peter Raven today received the 1995 United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Sasakawa Environment Prize for outstanding contributions to protection and management of the world environment.

At a ceremony in St. Louis, Mr. Raven, Director of the Missouri Botanical Garden, was presented with the certificate and $50,000 award by Joanne Fox-Przeworski, Director of the UNEP Regional Office for North America, on behalf of UNEP Executive Director Elizabeth Dowdeswell.

"The UNEP Sasakawa Environment Prize is not just a commendation ... it is also an encouragement for these initiatives to continue, to be intensified", Ms. Fox-Przeworski said in making the presentation. "We are indebted to you for what you have done for the conservation of the global environment. In honouring you, we seek inspiration for our own work."

Mr. Raven and Mr. Norman Myers of the United Kingdom shared one half of the $200,000 UNEP Sasakawa Prize for their work over nearly three decades to investigate, document and analyse the scientific background to two major environmental problems: the decline of tropical forests and the worldwide loss of biodiversity. Both are areas in which UNEP has a particular concern and responsibility. UNEP works in partnership with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) to address the problem of tropical forest depletion and is administrator of the Convention on Biological Diversity, an international agreement opened for signature at the Rio Earth Summit in Brazil in 1992 and which today involves 138 countries.

Mr. Raven and Mr. Myers in the early 1970s undertook detailed research to demonstrate that humankind was witnessing the opening phase of a mass extinction of species. Over the next decade, they worked together under the auspices of the United States National Research Council on a project entitled

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"Research Priorities in the Humid Tropics". They demonstrated that the overall deforestation rate was twice what had been conventionally supposed and, since tropical forests contained the majority of the Earth's species, identified this ecosystem as the main place within which mass extinction was under way.

They publicized their findings widely, together with a set of action recommendations, and took them to scientific and environmental leaders of major Governments in developed and developing countries, as well as to a host of international agencies and the media. As a result, the two problems became firmly established on policy agendas in organizations such as UNEP, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the World Bank, the United States National Academy of Sciences and the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU).

To many, they were responsible for alerting the global community to the two emergent crises of tropical deforestation and mass species extinction. Over the years, they have also broadened the scope of their activities to include population, poverty, desertification, global warming, consumption patterns, environmental economics and the North/South dialogue.

The UNEP Sasakawa Environment Prize was first established in 1984 with an endowment from Ryoichi Sasakawa, founder and Chairman of the Sasakawa Foundation, who passed away last July. The prize he created together with UNEP is one of the most prestigious and valuable environmental awards in the world, recognizing the work of leading environmentalists at the global level. The prize winners are selected by a distinguished panel of international leaders and environmentalists.

Past winners include: Chico Mendes, the rubber tapper from Brazil, assassinated leading the fight against the cattle ranchers' destruction of the Brazilian rainforest; M.S. Swaminathan of India, the father of the economic ecology movement; and Lester Brown, Director of the Worldwatch Institute, whose writings were instrumental in alerting the world about the threats to the biosphere.

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